Martin Scorsese, Denis Villeneuve, filmmakers everywhere declare war on “content”

In 2019, legendary director Martin Scorsese famously said that Marvel movies were “not cinema,” sparking off a firestorm among the movie-going faithful. Is the Goodfellas director an irascible old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn or a lone voice of reason willing to stand up and say what everyone’s thinking but no one will voice: that franchises are choking the life and color out of the movie-going experience? It probably depends on who you ask.

Scorsese has a new movie coming out, Killers of the Flower Moon, and he’s back on the press trail promoting it. That means more opportunities to weigh in on the state of Cinema. “[Studios are not] interested any longer in supporting individual voices that express their personal feelings or their personal thoughts and personal ideas and feelings on a big budget,” he told GQ. “The danger there is what it’s doing to our culture. Because there are going to be generations now that think movies are only those—that’s what movies are.”

"They already think that. Which means that we have to then fight back stronger. And it’s got to come from the grassroots level. It’s gotta come from the filmmakers themselves. And you’ll have, you know, the Safdie brothers, and you’ll have Chris Nolan, you know what I mean? And hit ’em from all sides. Hit ’em from all sides, and don’t give up. Let’s see what you got. Go out there and do it. Go reinvent. Don’t complain about it. But it’s true, because we’ve got to save cinema…I do think that the manufactured content isn’t really cinema."

The content monster

“Content” is a loose word that, when applied to entertainment, has come to embody how big studios have come to look at films, TV shows, YouTube videos, even books…not as individual pieces of art that should stand on their own, but as part of a continuum that exists to keep people engaged and keep them paying, rather than to edify or enrich them.

Or at least I get the idea that’s how Scorsese looks at it. “It’s manufactured content. It’s almost like AI making a film,” he said. “And that doesn’t mean that you don’t have incredible directors and special effects people doing beautiful artwork. But what does it mean? What do these films, what will it give you? Aside from a kind of consummation of something and then eliminating it from your mind, your whole body, you know? So what is it giving you?”

"What I mean is that you gotta rip it out of your skull and your guts. To find out what the hell you really… what do you really feel should be said at this point in life by you? You gotta say something with a movie. Otherwise, what’s the point of making it? You’ve got to be saying something."

Scorsese is far from alone in being triggered by the word “content.” When outlets were reporting on the impending end of the Hollywood writers strike, outlets like Variety described the entertainment industry as “the content industry,” and some people did not take kindly to that verbiage.

Dune director Denis Villeneuve: “I hate that word, ‘content'”

Another big name in Martin’s corner is Denis Villeneuve, the director of Dune (and the upcoming sequel Dune: Part II). He was very pleased to see the success of recent movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer, two handcrafted films that very much felt like they benefitted from the personal touch of their creators. He also likes that they were shown in IMAX theaters, which gives people an experience they can’t get at home.

“The future of cinema is IMAX and the large formats,” Villeneuve told the AP. “The audience wants to see something that they cannot have at home, that they cannot have on streaming. They want to experience an event.”

"There’s this notion that movies, in some people’s minds, became content instead of an art form. I hate that word, ‘content.’ That movies like Oppenheimer are released on the big screen and become an event brings back a spotlight on the idea that it’s a tremendous art form that needs to be experienced in theaters."

Are filmmakers right to be afraid of “content?”

Alright, so we’ve seen how many filmmakers feel antipathy towards the idea that they are making “content” instead of movies or TV shows. Do they have a point? If you ask me…yes and no.

I basically agree with the notion that the entertainment industry has increasingly come under the control of a shrinking number of enormous companies who prioritize revenue and share price to the point where it can crowd out the possibility of genuine artistic expression. Scorsese is right: studios don’t really seem interested in giving away lots of money so a filmmaker can execute a personal vision anymore. They want to make movies people will already be familiar with going in, which is why we have so many movies based on pre-existing intellection property, from comics to TV shows to toys.

I mean…except when they do give filmmakers large budgets to make personal projects, like how Oppenheimer cost $100 million to produce and has made nearly $1 billion at the box office. Then there are movies like Barbie, which could have been a bland cash grab but turned out to be a thoughtful comedy that touched a nerve with many people in large part because writer-director Greta Gerwig found a way to express herself while still adhering to the demands of a commercially driven system.

It’s true that big movies like that are the exception nowadays, but exceptions can give birth to new rules. The strength of major franchises like Marvel and Star Wars seems to be fading of late. The last time the entertainment industry collapsed was in the 1960s, which happened after Hollywood turned out too much formulaic nonsense and people stopped coming. So they turned to a new crop of directors who included the likes of Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and — as it happens — Martin Scorsese.

Now we’re at the cusp of another potential shift. Hollywood writers are winning labor fights against the studios and I imagine that the striking actors may eke out a similar victory. The way Scorsese and those who feel similarly talk, you’d think that the rise of “content” was an existential threat to entertainment, but I think it could just as easily be another passing trend in a long time of them.

Also, I think it’s important to point out that while it has indeed gotten harder to make big budget movies with a personal stamp, TV has been thriving for a while. One of my favorite shows of the past few years has been Warrior, a little-seen martial arts drama that stands head and shoulders above a lot of the action movies being made today. Just for fun, I’m currently rewatching BoJack Horseman on Netflix, an animated show about an alcoholic movie star that’s about as idiosyncratic as they come; it ran for six hugely acclaimed seasons before wrapping up in 2020. The Wheel of Time on Amazon is definitely being made with the intent to turn it into a money-making franchise, but it’s made with so much love and craft that it’s hard to get too bothered.

So I’m all for striking workers pushing for a fairer Hollywood where people are taken care of, and for directors making movies and TV shows that mean something to them. And I have hope that the tide is changing. But even if it isn’t, we’re still getting plenty of great stuff, even if we’re not getting it in quite the way that we used to.

I don’t think we need to fear the content monster too much. Yes, it’s under your bed, but it may be as scared of you as you are of it.

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